Star Trek: 10 Character Reveals That Didn't Have To Go THAT Hard
OK let's find out something about this Star Trek character and I'm sorry WHAT now?!
Gather round my friends and let me tell you a tale. What is it about? Oh, just the most earth-shattering information that's ever been dumped on your souls. Fancy a brew?
The nature of a long-running franchise allows the audience to really get to know the characters therein. When there are hundreds of hours of content to create, delving into the crew's backstories seems to be a no-brainer. Our question here is: did anyone see that coming?
When we meet these fresh faces in Star Trek, they're often thinly drawn versions of what they'll later become. This is perfectly fine, as the writers and actors learn who these characters really are. Then - BOOM - someone is responsible for WHAT? And...how are they supposed to play that?
They had a piercing you never knew about? No problem. They bombed a school bus full of orphans? Right. Let us just...just work that into years of portrayal...
Couldn't it have been a furry interest instead?
10. Spock's First Loyalty Is To The Man, Not The Ship
Part of the fun of The Original Series is that now, when one watches it through, one has the context of all of the Star Trek that followed it (and preceded it!). On first viewing, though difficult to bear in mind today, the audience were discovering new things about these characters week to week.
The Menagerie offered viewers a chance to enjoy The Cage, which at that point had never been aired in any kind of widespread format. So, Captain Christopher Pike was a surprise to the audience. So to, then, was Spock's apparent mutiny and theft of the Enterprise.
These days, the ships are stolen every other Tuesday, but in 1966 it was a shocking thing to see. Spock, that stoic yet fiercely logical crewman, was the very last person on the ship one would consider as a mutineer. Yet, here he was, knocking out engineers and kidnapping his former C.O.
There is something of a long history of huge character reveals encircling this man (see: Sybok, Michael Burnham, his child with Saavik) - but this was truly one of the most out-of-left-field shocks we had encountered.
Spock may have been Kirk's best friend, but where did his loyalties really lie?